According to the Michigan Messenger, the local McCain campaign operatives have been openly discussing a plan to use "caging" tactics on Election Day in November. If you don't know that term, this is basically what that means:

Caging is a technique of challenging voters where they take lists of addresses, mail to them with a 'do not forward' marking and if for whatever reason those mailings are returned, they use this as a basis for claiming that the voter no longer lives at the address at which they are registered.

The McCain campaign denies that this is its plan. But why would they even want to do this in the first place? Because poor people (particularly minorities) who don't know their rights are more likely to vote for Obama. They tend to, you know, want the government to help them. And since 11,000 homes received foreclosure notices in July of this year alone in battleground Michigan, the numbers are more than enough to affect the outcome of the entire race. State Democrats have taken this threat seriously enough to file suit in U.S. District Court. Talk about good PR — even if there's nothing to the caging allegations, painting McCain as against democracy itself is going to go over well with independents.

Michigan Dems file lawsuit against Macomb Co. GOP [AP]